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Teaching vocabulary in relationship to a reading.

Hi there,

I am a new teacher who after having finished CELTA has started her first job. My students need to improve their reading and vocabulary and so I'm trying to think of ways to have a reading lesson link up with a vocabulary lesson. The reading materials that I have been given from the company are in all honesty quite terrible, and so I think that I would like to find something authentic and something that the students would actually enjoy.

My problem, however, is this: During my CELTA training, the procedure would be to choose a text that was appropriate for the students, get them to notice elements of the target language, and then move on to either a grammar lesson, vocab. or functions lesson that dealt with this target language. During CELTA, when it came to vocabulary we either could choose things from a course book which had readings with the target language already embedded, or we could choose our own and find/create the appropriate material.

I am now in a situation where in this unit I have certain vocabulary items that I must teach. The readings that I have been given do not, however, reflect the vocabulary that the students must learn.

Should I just create my own readings or should I just provide my students with a reading that shares the same context as the target language while not actually containing it? If so, what would be a good thing to link those two activities? Or, should I just not try and link these two activities and instead treat them as two entirely different lessons? Your suggestions would be welcome :)